Apocalypse [h.s.]

Chapter thirty two

Never in my life had I thought I would be terrified from hearing the sound of a cellphone ringing, the oh so familiar sound of the iPhone ringtone, but I was. It rang for quite a while before it stopped, and I frantically fumbled for my flashlight which, of course, was at the bottom of my sleeping bag. I heard a muffled voice speaking as I finally reached it, and quickly peeked up from the sleeping bag, turning it on. My eyes landed on brown, curly hair, and I quickly realized it was Harry, sitting with his back into a tree with his head bowed down. I didn't know if he had noticed me, but he was sniffling, and I couldn't really tell properly, but it sounded like he was crying.

"Harry?" I said as I crawled over to him, him laying across from me under another tree. I tried to look closer at him, but I was still far away. "Why are you up? Who was that on the phone?" Now I had made my way all the way over to him, and his cheeks were wet and his eyes were red. "Harry.. what's wrong? Did something happen?"

"Just go to sleep again," he said quietly and sniffled one more time, not lifting his head up.

I frowned. "What, no, I'm not going to bed until you tell me why you're crying."

"Yes you are. And I'm not crying."

"I may have sucked at math in high school, but I'm not stupid." He sighed and rubbed his eyes. I sat down in front of him and took his hand. "What's wrong?"

Finally he gave in and looked up at me, although I kind of wish he hadn't, because there was so much hurt in his eyes that I could hardly bear it. "You know that-that my phone is on mute all the time, right?"

I nodded. "Yeah, cause you're too lazy to have it on," I said and chuckled halfheartedly.

A small, almost not noticable smile quickly covered his lips, before fading too fast, and he sniffed. "Yeah, well. I must've turned the sound on by accident, or someone else must've done it, but I-I don't know. Anyway, I didn't want to have the sound on cause the last time I did, something awful happened, and now it happened again and I don't know what to do."

"What happened? Who called?" I asked carefully in a quiet tone so that no one could hear me.

He sniffled once again. "It was my aunt. She said that the GMF .. they've taken my family. My mom, my stepdad an my sister. All of them."

My heart leaped to my throat, and my eyes turned wide from utter shock. "What?"

Nodding, he wiped one of the tears that stained his cheek, and smiled sarcastically. "Yep. Those fucking bastards ransacked every corner of Cheshire and took everything they could find."

"But.. Why Cheshire? It's such a small town," I asked, being careful as I spoke because at that point I didn't know what could piss him off or make him sad.

He sighed heavily. "Apparently they're after me. Fabio kind of told me before we left. They wanna threaten me to get me on their side. They always do this when they discover someone from other companies that would fit into their system well, Fabio said."

I moved his face to look at me, and my eyes were wide like they had been for a while. "Harry, why didn't you tell me?"

A ray of guilt and regret flashed in his eyes, and he squeezed my hands, looking down at them. "I'm sorry. I just didn't want you to worry."

The argument he had was, to my disappoinment, very understanding. His answer didn't come as a shock to me because, frankly, I would probably do the same, and I kind of knew why he hadn't told me. Nevertheless, it is hard when someone you care about or love has something on their mind or is in danger and doesn't tell you, because you want to help them, and you want to carry their burdens with them so that the weight of it doesn't break them.